Oxford, Bodleian MS. Heb. a. 3.19

Bodleian Library (Oxford, United Kingdom)

One leaf document

Paper

Brown (iron-gall)

Calamus

No ruling can be seen

56+marginalia

153

54

12th Century CE

Yemen, Aden

Kutch, ʿAydhāb, Sīlān

Orient

Judeo-Arabic

Letter

India Book II, 32: Letter from Maḍmūn b. Yefet, Aden, to his brother-in-law Abū Zikrī Yehuda b. Yosef ha-Kohen settling the estate of Jewish traders who had died in shipwreck. Also discusses business with Bilāl b. Jarīr, later the ruler of Aden. Maḍmūn is outfitting a ship to sail to Sīlān (Sri Lanka) carrying, among other things, three Jewish precious metal smiths, one of them a Maghribī.

No vowels or accents

From the Genizah, 1896.

990053386320205171

https://www.nli.org.il/en/discover/manuscripts/hebrew-manuscripts/itempage?vid=KTIV&scope=KTIV&docId=PNX_MANUSCRIPTS990053386320205171&SearchTxt=Heb.%20a.%203.19,AND (Date accessed: 2026-01-15)

https://genizah.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/catalog/volume_5 (Date accessed: 2026-01-15)

S. D. Goitein and M. A. Friedman, India Book 2: Madmun, nagid of Yemen, and the India trade: Cairo Geniza documents‎ (in Hebrew) (Ben-Zvi Institute, 2010).

S. D. Goitein and M. A. Friedman, India traders of the middle ages : documents from the Cairo Geniza : India book (Brill, 2008), vol. 1.

S. D. Goitein, Letters of Medieval Jewish Traders (Princeton University Press, 1973).

Available online through the Princeton Geniza Project at https://geniza.princeton.edu/documents/5460/ (accessed January 15, 2026).